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August 24, 2014

Randy Seaver always posts the
most interesting questions for his Saturday
Night Genealogy Fun series on his Genea-Musings blog. I usually don’t get the chance to participate
in a timely manner, but this week’s challenge caught my eye right away. Randy
asks:

1) Using your
ancestral lines, how far back in time can you go with two degrees of
separation? That means "you knew an ancestor, who knew another ancestor."
When was that second ancestor born?

2) Tell us
about it in a blog post of your own, in a comment to this blog post, in a
status line on Facebook or a stream post on Google Plus.

Ok, Randy, here’s my answer:

When I was a toddler, my grandmother’s
side of the family gathered for a five-generation picture. Although I don’t
have any memory of that day, both I and my great-great-grandmother, Minnie
(King) Steele, were in it. My mother recently gave me another picture of Minnie
holding me.

Minnie King was born November
23, 1873, in Cheshire Township in Gallia County, Ohio. She had just turned 88
years old when she died on December 13, 1961, not long after our picture was
taken. Mom says she was her usual cheery and active self right up to the end.

Great-great-grandma Minnie (King) Steele and me, 1961

As I looked for the earliest
family member Minnie might have known, I breezed past her father and mother,
Newel and Electa (Roush) King. I considered her grandfather, Gideon Roush, who
lived until July 1894, when Minnie was 20 years old. Could I do better than
that?

Yes. Minnie’s life overlapped
with her great-grandmother, Hannah (Roush) Roush. Hannah was born December 30,
1790, and died in Cheshire Township at the age of 85 on March 26, 1876. Minnie
was about two and a half years old at the time, living in the same small
community. How I wish I had a photo of them together!

So with two degrees of
separation, my life touched my great-great-grandmother, whose life touched her
great-grandmother, who was born as the calendar turned from 1790 to 1791. That’s
223 years and counting.

August 20, 2014

My grandmother, Wilma Steele, at Indian
Lake in Logan County, Ohio, in the summer of 1935. At not quite 19 years old, I think she looked pretty cute in her little swim shorts. This was a few months before she eloped to marry Fred Herrel.

August 4, 2014

Old newspapers are always
fascinating. Even when I don’t find the obituary or whatever I’m looking for
(which happens more often than not), I usually turn up something of interest.
Consider the following advertisement for Hiram College in Hiram, Ohio. It ran
on the front page of the Portage County
Democrat, published in Ravenna, Ohio, on January 10, 1872:

Hiram College

Hiram College offers the
student a choice of six courses of study: Biblical, Classical, Scientific,
Ladies’, Teachers’ and Commercial.

TUITION

Common English Branches,
Algebra, Composition

and Natural Philosophy, per term…..$7.00

All other Studies……$10.00

Penmanship (daily
lessons)…..$6.00

Penmanship (complete
course)……$15.00

Complete Commercial
Course…..$20.00

Instrumental Music…..$12.00

Use of instrument one hour
per day…..$2.00

Incidentals…..$1.00

Students in the Commercial
Course can have access to the College classes upon further payment of five
dollars per term.

Calender, 1871-2 [sic]

First Term commences—Tuesday,
August 22, 1871

First Term closes—Friday,
November 17, 1871

Second Term
commences—Tuesday, Dec. 5, 1871

Second Term closes—Friday,
March 1, 1872

Third Term commences—Tuesday,
March 19, 1871 [should be 1872]

Third Term closes with
Commencement day, June 20, 1872

Board $3.50 to $4.00 per
week. Good facilities for self boarding, by which students materially reduce
expenses.

For catalogue or further
information, address B.A. HINSDALE, Pres’t

Hiram, Ohio

I did a quick check using the
Measuring Worth website, and found $10 had the same relative purchasing power
in 1872 as $197 does today. I have a hunch the incoming Class of 2018 would
find that a pretty attractive course fee.

It’s interesting to see the
curriculum offerings, too. I wonder what classes were offered in the Ladies’ course
of study? The fact that Penmanship was listed separately in this little
advertisement suggests it was popular. With the decline of teaching cursive
handwriting in elementary school, will we eventually see Penmanship on college
class schedules again?

Western Reserve Eclectic Institute at Hiram, Ohio, 1858; from the Hiram College Archives

Hiram College was founded as
the Western Reserve Eclectic Institute in 1850, and has a proud history of higher education. My father-in-law and at least
three of his ancestors attended Hiram at one time or another. He also has a
family connection by marriage to one of its founders. So the accidental discovery of this little ad might
lead me into a little more investigation.

That’s the fun thing about
newspaper research. You never know what you might find, cranking through the
microfilm on a summer afternoon.

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About the Author

I'm a family history researcher, writer, and blogger based in Central Ohio. A Sense of Family chronicles my journey into family history, and I'd love to have you read along. In the process, I hope to give you some tips and resources you can use to trace and record the stories of your own family. I also offer professional genealogy services at Buckeye FamilyTrees, where I specialize in researching Ohio ancestors.